1. “A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
2. "A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him."
3. "Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you -- you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside."
4. “Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.”
5. “Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.”
6. “Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
7. “Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.”
8. "I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history."
9. "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?"
10. “It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.”
11. "It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations."
12. "Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."
13. “Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers -- such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
14. “Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience . . . from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.”
15. “Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.”
16. “One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.”
17. “Our envy of others devours us most of all.”
18. ”Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”
19. “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart.”
20. “The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.”
21. "Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."
22. “We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.”
23. "Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory."
24. “You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again.”
